Authors: Stephanie Greene
“I still think it’s cruel.”
“You even worried about ants,” Sheba said. “I never will forget the time you rescued a whole bunch
of those ants that were ruining your grandfather’s rose garden with their tunnels and hid them in your bedroom.”
“Granddad put down ant traps,” Cecile said. “He was going to poison them.”
“Red ants were running all over the house for the rest of that summer.” Sheba chuckled. “Your grandfather was fit to be tied.”
“I didn’t get punished, though,” Cecile said contentedly. She wrapped her legs around the legs of her chair as Sheba put the plate in front of her.
“That’s because I never told anyone about the paper bag with a few red ants, as dead as doorknobs, I found in your pajama drawer,” Sheba said.
“I know.”
“You go ahead and eat now,” Sheba said, resting her hand on Cecile’s shoulder. “I hope you’re hungry.”
“I could eat a horse,” Cecile declared.
“Did you rat?” Natalie asked as she stuck her head around the edge of their bedroom door.
Cecile looked up from her book. The lamp on her
bedside table was a soft spotlight in the dark room. Lucy slept soundly in shadows on the other side. “No.”
“Good.” Natalie ran across the room and jumped onto Cecile’s bed, jiggling it merrily, as if trying to coax Cecile out of her sulk. “You’ll never guess what,” she said.
“What?”
“King’s taking us on the
Rammer
tomorrow. I saw him and Sis downstairs.”
“Really?” Cecile shut her book and sat up.
“And look what I smuggled,” Natalie took a large white dinner napkin out from under her shirt and put it on the spread between them. She unfolded it ceremoniously, revealing treasure. A tiny jar of caviar and a stack of paper-thin crackers.
“Mom will kill you,” said Cecile.
“No one will even notice.” Natalie rocked back and forth on her bottom as she unscrewed the cap and held out the jar. “There’s tons of it down there.”
They spread the tiny eggs with their fingers,
determined to ignore the sharp saltiness of a luxury their parents coveted so highly. Shouts of laughter and the clinking of ice cubes floated up from the terrace.
“Who else is down there?” Cecile asked.
“The Whites and some couple from the club I don’t know.”
Someone put on a jazz record. Cecile turned off her light and they knelt in front of the open window, pressing their noses against the warm screen, to watch.
“Sis looks tipsy again,” Cecile said after a few minutes.
Tipsy
is what their mother had said Sis was a few summers ago when Sis had started shouting on their terrace one night and their father had had to walk her home.
The children had watched as Sis leaned against their father’s shoulder and yelled, “The king is dead, long live the king, the pitiful SOB!” and then laughed.
“S, O, B spells sob,” Natalie had said excitedly.
“Oh,
sob, sob
!” The children had rubbed their fists in their eyes, pretending to cry, as they rolled on the floor. When they asked their mother about it the next morning, she said Sis had eaten something that didn’t agree with her and it had made her tipsy. The children had laughed again to hear such a silly word.
“It means drunk, you know,” Natalie said now.
Cecile stared.
“You didn’t know that, did you?”
“I did too.”
“You know what else?”
Cecile shook her head.
“That isn’t lemonade in Sis’s thermos. It’s liquor.”
Cecile was shocked. “How do you know that?”
“William.”
“What does William know?”
“We saw Sis one afternoon when she was leaving the beach. William could tell she was drunk.”
“It’s none of William’s business,” Cecile said. Then, in spite of herself, “Did you get drunk on that beer?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Natalie said, jabbing her.
“Don’t you be an idiot,” Cecile said, jabbing back. “What does drunk feel like, anyway?”
“Sob, sob!” Natalie joked, rubbing her eyes.
Her sister’s laughing face was so close, her friendly glance so familiar, Cecile didn’t ask how Natalie could bear him. She looked out at the party; she didn’t even want William in the room.
“M
odel walk,” Natalie commanded.
Cecile took one of the towels she and Natalie were carrying down to the dock and carefully balanced it on her head. Keeping her back stiff and her eyes straight ahead, she walked as steadily as she could, the way models walked on runways in fashion shows. She and Natalie used to practice at home using books. On the Island, they used towels and had contests to see who could make it down to the dock without losing theirs.
With their colorful towels piled high, their arms laden with canvas bags and more towels, they could have been the leaders of a caravan crossing the desert. Lucy and Jack had run on ahead with their father. Their mother and Granddad were bringing up the rear.
The drive was warm beneath Cecile’s feet; the hamper banged rhythmically against her legs. “Mom said we’re having lunch at the Hungry Pelican again,” she said over her shoulder. She pictured the white stucco restaurant perched on the hillside above the bay and the tall foamy drinks with umbrellas King had ordered for them last year. “King said he bought bigger inner tubes. I can hardly wait to ride them.”
When her towel threatened to slip to one side, Cecile tilted her head. To be going out on King’s boat at last! She’d stand in the bow as they roared into the bay and pretend to be the masthead, holding her face into the wind as they cut across the water. Waves would part helplessly under the bow while small boats zigzagged ahead of them. When the sun got too hot, she’d sit under the awning and watch her father, Granddad, and Jack fish.
She was so busy picturing the day that when she reached the top of the stairs and saw the boy standing with his back to her at the entrance to the boathouse, she halted. He jabbed a metal scoop into the
ice cooler, again and again, and let the cubes clatter into one of the two buckets at his feet. The other bucket was full.
One last scoop and the second bucket was full, too. The boy tossed the scoop into the cooler and let the lid slam shut. Cecile saw the muscles in his arms flex as he bent down and picked up a bucket in each hand. She could count the ribs in his tanned, shirtless back. Her heart was pounding in her ears, as if something had leaped out at her in the dark and terrified her.
“Don’t stop here,” Natalie said impatiently as she came up behind. “Nobody can see where they’re going.”
“Sorry.”
The boy glanced their way as he turned. His eyes slid over Cecile as if she weren’t there and rested, for a fraction of a second, on Natalie, before he walked away. She might have been a ghost, the way he’d looked through her, Cecile thought, but he’d seen Natalie. And when they got on the boat, Natalie would see him. A surge of jealousy so strong she
thought she might get sick surged through her. And of her own sister.
“Get
going
,” Natalie said, prodding her in the back.
Ahead of them, the boy jumped nimbly onto the deck of the
Rammer
and went below. How could she go on the boat now? Her, in her tank suit, next to Natalie in her bikini. Oh, and her chest! Cecile’s towel tumbled from her head when she looked down. Maybe she could run back and get a shirt.
But if she left, she wouldn’t be there when Natalie and the boy looked at each other. Wouldn’t be there to stop Natalie from smiling and tossing her hair. To stop the boy from smiling back. The boy wouldn’t have eyes for anyone else.
The day suddenly felt excruciating.
“Cecile! Natalie! Look!” Jack waved proudly from his perch on a blue inner tube in the stern like a prince on his throne. Lucy sat next to him on an orange one, a beaming princess. “King said we can write our names on them!” Jack shouted.
The boy came up from the cabin and went to the far side of the boat. He moved slowly toward the
prow, leaning over to check that everything was in order. Natalie jumped nimbly onto the deck and dumped her towels on the low table under the awning. She fell onto the couch and rested her foot on her knee, hunching over it to inspect it.
“You made me stub my toe, you idiot,” she said. She touched the bloody flap of skin dangling from the tip and winced. Pushing up her sunglasses, she leaned back and rested her foot on the edge of the table. “Why’d you have to stop like that?” she complained, shutting her eyes.
The boy had rounded the bow and was moving toward them. Cecile glanced up when he went past; he kept his eyes straight ahead as he stepped onto the dock. He nodded to Granddad and her mother as the three met halfway down the dock and kept walking. Cecile’s legs went limp.
“Watch out!” Natalie cried as Cecile sagged onto the cushion beside her. She pulled her knee to her chin again to inspect the damage. “Haven’t you done enough harm?”
“I think that was the new cabin boy,” Cecile said.
“Who?”
“The boy who was just here.”
Natalie looked up, saw no one. “So? Do you have a crush on him or something?”
“I’m not
you
, Natalie.”
“You do, don’t you?” Natalie said. She took a last look at her toe and lowered her foot to the deck. “I wouldn’t get too excited. He’s not coming with us.”
“How do you know?”
“King told me last night that he was going to have us all to himself.” Natalie made a mocking face. “Poor Cecile.”
Poor Cecile, indeed. It was all she could do not to cheer when the truck’s engine sprang into life in the parking area and the pickup rolled slowly out of sight.
“You and your cabin boy can row your dinghy up the East River and come visit me and my husband on Sutton Place,” Natalie was saying as she twisted her hair into a knot on top of her head and fastened it with a clip. “Although you’ll probably have to use the service entrance.”
Of course! She should have realized—the boy
could notice Natalie all he wanted. Natalie wouldn’t pay any attention to a boy who worked on a boat.
Oh, joy, oh, bliss! “First dibs on the blue tube after Jack!” Cecile shouted as she leaped up and ran to greet Granddad and her mother. “Mom,” she called. “I hope you brought the root beer!”
They got back to the dock at three, full of salt air. Natalie went up to the house with their mother and Granddad. Cecile stayed behind with Jack to watch King and their father clean their fish on the fish shelf attached to the side of the boathouse. Cecile always watched, as much as she mourned for the poor fish. First they scraped off the iridescent scales with a flat of a knife. Then King used his long, thin knife to effortlessly slice off the head of each fish underneath the gills. Last came the guts. They scooped those out callously, with a single finger, and dropped them into a bucket.
Cecile and Jack carried the bucket to the rocks and emptied it for the gulls, then Cecile went up to the house. Natalie was standing outside their parents’
closed bedroom door. She put a finger up to her mouth and beckoned to Cecile to join her.
“A letter came from Harry while we were gone,” she whispered when Cecile stood beside her.
“And I say he can stay there until his contract’s up,” they heard their father say.
“Contract? What contract?” their mother said. “He’s sixteen, in case you’ve forgotten, Andrew.”
“His commitment then. It’s not going to kill him, being unhappy.” Cecile pictured her father’s cold, remote face. “If anything, it might teach him a bit of discipline.”
“You and your damned discipline.” There was silence, and then the sound of the bathroom door closing with a controlled slam. Natalie and Cecile hurried down the hall to their room.
“More drama, thanks to Harry,” Natalie said when she’d shut the door. “If I were you, I’d stay as far away from them as possible.”
For once, Cecile didn’t argue.
“W
e’re not going anywhere until you take off those shoes,” Cecile said when Jenny finally came down to the dock at nine thirty the next morning. (Nine thirty! What could she have been doing?)
“My mother made me,” said Jenny.
“All the more reason.” Cecile stood over her like a sentry until Jenny revealed her soft, white feet.
“Now what?” Jenny said as she followed Cecile tentatively down the steps.
Cecile took pity on Jenny and led the way in the shallow water at the sand’s edge. “Is that the boat you went out on?” said Jenny.
“Yep.”
“Is it your grandfather’s?”
“No, it’s King’s.” Cecile had given the
Rammer
enough of a glance to see the boy was unloading supplies from the wagon he’d pulled down the dock and carrying them down into the cabin. “Stop staring,” she told Jenny, picking up her pace. “It’s rude.”
“But did you see that boy?” Jenny asked in an excited whisper as she trotted to keep up. “Ooh la la. Who do you think he is, the prince?”
“Don’t be such an idiot.”
“He’s cute. Do you know him?”
“Why should I?” Cecile said. “Come
on
.”
It was going to be a scorcher. Already the heat was sharp on their shoulders; the tiny waves lapped at their feet like soothing cats’ tongues. Cecile led Jenny to the pile of rocks at a far end of the beach. The craggy outcrop was exposed, twice a day, by the falling tide, its uneven surface a combination of slippery seaweed and rough barnacles.
The pools of clear water left behind in crevices and cracks were like small lakes, and the girls like giants; they stepped over miles of countryside in a single stride; they peered into the depths of each one
and saw clear to the bottom. Anything might be found in a lake—a rock that sluggishly tilted and moved, revealing itself to be a snail. Crabs, of course, and mussels, clinging to the sides, impossible to tear free. Once in a while, if they were lucky, a starfish.
Cecile could have been a savage child raised in the forest by wolves, compared to Jenny; Jenny was as soft as her feet. She was afraid there were ticks in the sea grass or that she might step on the sunken tail of a horseshoe crab as they wandered along the shore. She even hesitated to hold the piece of pale green glass Cecile showed her that had been sanded to a smooth surface by the waves and sand.
“It’s harmless sea glass,” Cecile said impatiently. “We have a whole bottle of it at home.”
“It’s still glass, isn’t it?”
When they left the beach and roamed the island, it got even funnier. Cecile had to pull Jenny back by her blouse when she started to topple over after Cecile showed her how to balance on the railing of the bridge; she shrieked and flapped her hands in front of her face when a lazy bumblebee hovered in
front of them as they walked past the privet hedge.
“Stop yelling,” Cecile said, shooing it away. “He couldn’t sting you if he tried. He’s ready to burst!”
By the middle of the day, even Cecile had to admit the driveway was hot. They walked on grass where it was available, and ran quickly where it was not as they made their way back to the dock. The way Jenny hopped and shrieked, lifting up her feet like a man in India walking across hot coals, made them laugh so hard they collapsed onto the grass and rolled around for minutes and minutes, delighting in the feeling of it. All it took was for Cecile to imitate Jenny’s shrill “Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!” to set them going again.
They didn’t hear the car coming. Sis slowed to a stop as the girls lay, panting, and rolled down her window. “Are you all right?” she asked in a disapproving voice. Cecile was about to sit up when Sis added, “You’re not disabled, I hope?”
It set the girls off again; they couldn’t help it.
“Silly girls,” Sis said, and drove slowly on.
“Who was that?” Jenny asked.
Of course, then Cecile had to tell her the story about King and Sis. Jenny listened with such an avid, hungry look on her face, Cecile almost immediately regretted having opened her mouth. “I can hardly wait to see what King looks like,” Jenny said in a breathless voice when Cecile was finished.
“He looks perfectly normal,” Cecile said. What had she been thinking, telling Jenny? If Jenny told her mother, Mrs. Cahoon might look down on King and Sis. How dare she? Cecile thought, feeling her hackles rise. She doesn’t even know them.
“You have to promise you won’t tell anyone,” she told Jenny fiercely. “Not your mother, or your father, or anyone.”
“I won’t. I promise,” Jenny said. Then, delighted: “My mother would have a fit.”
“You mean like this?” Cecile fell over onto her back and lifted her feet in the air. “Ah…ah…ah!” she cried, flailing her hands and feet about wildly, picturing Mrs. Cahoon doing the same thing, but in high heels. Jenny laughed, even though it was her mother Cecile was making fun of.
“Come on,” said Cecile finally. “I want to show you something.”
Darn, the pickup truck was still in the parking area. Cecile had become conscious of her every move when the
Rammer
was docked. Thankfully, the boat, dock, and beach were all empty; the still air was hazy with heat. Anyone with a lick of sense was inside eating cool melon or drinking iced tea. It was all blissfully deserted.
But for how long, if the truck was there? The boy and Captain Stone might have gone out fishing or into town to buy supplies. What if she and Jenny were standing here when the boy came back?
“Come on,” Cecile cried as she ran down the steps and crouched beside the dock. “Hurry up!” she said, beckoning to Jenny as she ducked her head and crawled under. “Before someone sees you.”
“Like who?” Jenny protested. “There’s no one here.” But she ducked down and crawled under the dock, too.
Cecile scooted up on the hard-packed sand toward the concrete footing that secured the dock
until her head almost touched the dock’s wooden slats. The air was thick with the sharp smell of mud and salt. The low tide was heading back in.
Cecile loved hiding here. When they were all little, it was where they ran the minute they heard a boat. Here Harry, Natalie, Cecile, and Jack would huddle as the feet of strangers pounded over their heads. Last summer, Harry had deserted the game to play golf and Natalie had become too fastidious. Even Jack, who in his own way was as particular as Natalie, never came here anymore.
As for Lucy, she’d been convinced a monster lived there ever since the day Cecile had made growling noises as Lucy walked overhead.
“What’re we going to do under here?” Jenny protested as she struggled to crawl on all fours while using one hand to keep her nostrils pinched firmly shut.
“Hide,” Cecile said when Jenny finally plopped onto the sand beside her.
“But it’s disgusting,” Jenny said. She frowned at the bits of shells and wet sand clinging to the palms
of her hand before wiping them off on her shorts. “Why does it smell so bad?”
“The tide’s out. Shhh…don’t talk so loud.”
“There’s no one around. Who’re we hiding from, anyway?”
“Just wait,” Cecile said. What did Jenny
do
in the city, anyway? She didn’t understand the first thing about mystery and excitement. “If you’d be quiet for one minute,” Cecile said with a touch of contempt, “you’ll see something amazing.”
“One minute,” said Jenny, but she didn’t sound happy. Cecile could almost see her counting the seconds in her head.
It was amazing, really, how quickly the tide came in. If you were willing to sit patiently and watch, you could see it eagerly lapping against the pilings, the waves edged with a hem of seaweed and foam. Cecile sat quietly, hoping that Jenny would too. But Jenny shifted restlessly, rocking from side to side to get comfortable, until Cecile was finally forced to order, “Sit still!”
“I can’t help it. This sand’s as hard as a rock,” Jenny said. “How much longer?”
Before Cecile could answer, the amazing thing she’d been waiting for happened: A tiny hermit crab poked up its head from a hole in the sand in front of them and poised on the edge with its feelers darting tentatively, ready to dash back into hiding at a moment’s notice. Sensing the coast was clear, it slowly began waving a claw back and forth in the air as if calling surrender with a white flag.
Immediately a second crab crawled out, and then a third. A fourth, fifth, sixth.
The wet sand between Jenny and Cecile and the water was soon cluttered with them. Cecile put her finger up to her lips when she felt Jenny look at her, not daring to take her eyes off the army that had begun moving across the sand.
But not for long.
“Ow!” Jenny suddenly cried, and each crab darted into the hole nearest it and was gone. “Something bit me,” Jenny said as she fell against Cecile. “I think it was one of those horrible
things
.” She brushed frantically at her bottom.
“It’s probably a shell,” Cecile said. She shrugged
Jenny off in disgust. “Look what you’ve done. They’re gone. You ruined it.”
“I don’t care.” Jenny got up onto all fours. “I’m getting out of here.”
“Not yet!” Cecile cried. She grabbed Jenny’s leg. “Listen!”
It was a boat. Cecile and Jenny froze as the sound of it approaching the dock grew louder and louder. A boy’s voice called out. Another boy’s voice answered. Jenny looked at Cecile questioningly as she settled back on the sand. Cecile shook her head.
The boat slowed as it neared the dock. Whoever was driving cut the engine. Cecile heard the boat knock against the wooden pilings as it slid into its spot. There was a thud of feet as someone jumped up onto the dock.
“Wind it around that one,” a voice called. “Right. Now make a slipknot.”
Oh, no. Her heart pounding, Cecile ducked to look beyond the pilings. The boy grabbed the small motor of the dinghy with both hands and yanked it up so that the propeller blades lifted clear of the
water. When Jenny tapped her on the shoulder, Cecile sat back. Who? Jenny mouthed, raising her shoulders. Cecile dumbly shook her head.
The oars clattered together as the boy stowed them under the seat of the boat. “That should do it!” he called. Then he leaped onto the dock, too, and the two boys started toward shore. Their voices and laughter rose and fell, their footsteps stumbling from side to side as if they were knocking against each other.
The boys in Cecile’s school walked the same way: pushing and shoving and knocking into one another in the halls like mountain goats jockeying for space on a narrow mountain path. One time when they slammed Cecile into her open locker as they passed, she indignantly told them that, that they looked like goats.
“Yeah, horny as goats,” one of them had said, and the other boys laughed. She could tell it meant something dirty.
“Oh. My. God,” Jenny mouthed as they came closer, her eyes popping with excitement.
The space between the boards over Cecile’s head suddenly felt as wide as a window. If the boy were to look down now, he’d see her—crouched on the sand like a little girl, hiding. She didn’t dare to look up.
“What about the blonde?” she heard the other boy, not her boy, say. “She’s pretty hot.”
“If you like that type.”
“What’s her name?”
They were almost overhead now.
“I make it a point never to ask.” Cecile pictured the boy’s careless shrug. “It drives them nuts. Those rich girls all have the same kind of name. Anyway, they’re too much work for me.”
The other boy said something about cars as they walked on. There was a series of thuds of things being tossed into the boathouse—life preservers, probably. Then their feet on the steps, and the door of the truck slammed. Then the other door, and the engine started up. In the thunderous silence that followed the sound of the truck leaving, Cecile heard her heart pounding in her ears. She felt even Jenny could hear it.
They were talking about Natalie, they had to have been.
“Who were they?” Jenny asked breathlessly.
“I don’t know,” Cecile said. “Day trippers, probably.”
“Maybe it was that boy from the boat.”
“So?” The space was suddenly too small. Jenny with her eager, hungry face so close to Cecile’s. It was horribly cold, too. A chill ran through Cecile’s body from her head to her toes; she was desperate for the sun. “Let’s get out of here,” she said, and scrambled off. Only when she was standing on the beach, with the heat of the sun on her shoulders, could she breathe.
“That would have been so embarrassing if they saw us,” Jenny panted, standing up next to her.
“Why?”
“Oh, my god. Two boys?”
“They’d think we were clamming,” Cecile said coldly. “That’s what people do on beaches, in case you don’t know.”
“But two boys?” Jenny insisted. “And you and me, crawling out on our hands and knees?”
“Boys, boys, boys,” Cecile said. “I’m sick of it.” She looked around to find something, anything, to deflect Jenny’s attention. Looking down the beach, she had never been so happy to see her little sister.
“Cecile! Cecile!” Lucy cried. Her high-pitched voice floated across the beach like a lifeline as she raced toward them from the direction of the club. Sheba walked slowly behind her, carrying a large canvas bag and a beach chair. Jack trailed behind Sheba. He was dragging their striped umbrella and stopping more than he walked to pick up interesting shells and strings of seaweed the water had deposited at his feet.
“Cecile! Cecile!” Lucy cried again. Her voice was joyful; she ran as fast as she could to see her very own big sister on the beach.
“Lucy! Lucy!” Cecile raced to meet her and swooped Lucy up, swinging her in dizzying circles that made Lucy shriek. When Cecile finally put her down, Lucy staggered drunkenly down to the edge of the water and sat with her legs straight out and her knees pressed tightly together. She raised her
shovel above her head, prepared to beat back any wave that dared try to drag her out to sea.
Cecile threw herself on the sand as Sheba approached. “They didn’t want to stay at the club,” Sheba said, putting the bag next to Cecile and slowly unfolding the chair.
“Who can blame them?” Cecile said, squinting up at her. “There’s much more to do here.”